From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Richard Stallman Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: Unibyte characters, strings, and buffers Date: Sat, 29 Mar 2014 20:24:11 -0400 Message-ID: References: <831txozsqa.fsf@gnu.org> <83ppl7y30l.fsf@gnu.org> <87r45nouvx.fsf@uwakimon.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp> <8361myyac6.fsf@gnu.org> <87a9capqfr.fsf@uwakimon.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp> <83eh1mfd09.fsf@gnu.org> <87ob0pnyt6.fsf@uwakimon.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp> <87ioqxnhhk.fsf@uwakimon.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp> <87bnwpov7b.fsf@fencepost.gnu.org> Reply-To: rms@gnu.org NNTP-Posting-Host: plane.gmane.org Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-15 X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1396139075 27616 80.91.229.3 (30 Mar 2014 00:24:35 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Sun, 30 Mar 2014 00:24:35 +0000 (UTC) Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org To: David Kastrup Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Sun Mar 30 01:24:31 2014 Return-path: Envelope-to: ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([208.118.235.17]) by plane.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1WU3Y1-0001tS-NQ for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Sun, 30 Mar 2014 01:24:25 +0100 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:41898 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1WU3Y1-0000UI-AU for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Sat, 29 Mar 2014 20:24:25 -0400 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:44181) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1WU3Xt-0000IW-S5 for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Sat, 29 Mar 2014 20:24:22 -0400 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1WU3Xo-0004lq-KQ for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Sat, 29 Mar 2014 20:24:17 -0400 Original-Received: from fencepost.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::e]:36096) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1WU3Xo-0004lh-Hm for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Sat, 29 Mar 2014 20:24:12 -0400 Original-Received: from rms by fencepost.gnu.org with local (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1WU3Xn-0004JJ-S7; Sat, 29 Mar 2014 20:24:11 -0400 In-reply-to: <87bnwpov7b.fsf@fencepost.gnu.org> (message from David Kastrup on Sat, 29 Mar 2014 16:55:52 +0100) X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: Error: Malformed IPv6 address (bad octet value). X-Received-From: 2001:4830:134:3::e X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.14 Precedence: list List-Id: "Emacs development discussions." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.devel:171181 Archived-At: [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider ]]] [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, ]]] [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]] Is there any need, nowadays, for a unibyte character to imply a character set? Originally unibyte buffers were meant as a backward compatibility feature for old Emacs versions in which al buffers were unibyte. Nowadays, I think we use unibyte buffers mainly (perhaps exclusively) for buffers whose contents are largely not characters at all. For those buffers, there is no reason to interpret the contents as characters in any particular way. We could consider them as bytes, and nothing else. This means converting those bytes to characters could be done by explicit operations where you would specify what sort of conversion you want. -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation 51 Franklin St Boston MA 02110 USA www.fsf.org www.gnu.org Skype: No way! That's nonfree (freedom-denying) software. Use Ekiga or an ordinary phone call.